Agricultural commodity markets in developing countries are characterized by high transaction costs and risks that reduce trade flows among spatial markets. We examine whether institutionalized agricultural commodity exchange markets reduce transaction costs and hence spatial price dispersion...

In a well-functioning futures market, the futures price at expiration equals the price of the underlying asset. This condition failed to hold in grain markets for most of 2005-10. During this period, futures contracts expired up to 35% above the cash grain price. We develop a rational...

Little is known about trading activity in commodity options market. We study the information content of commodity futures and options trading volume. Time-series tests indicate that futures contracts in a portfolio with the lowest option-to-futures volume ratio (O/F) outperform those in a...

Commodity futures markets carry out two important marketing functions with respect to agricultural products: (1) a price discovery role and (2) a price risk management role. The relative effectiveness with which futures markets fulfill these two roles is dependent on the efficiency of the...

Organized exchanges have evolved methods for enforcing contracts, which allow the contracts themselves to be traded at low cost. Theorists have modeled futures contracts as tools for risk management, despite an extensive empirical literature that does not support predictions about bias in prices...